As an artist, getting support from your local community is easy. Just ask.
I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to ask people for favours, but here’s what I discovered. My community loves to help locals. Last Friday, my local newspaper, The Columbia Valley Pioneer, published an article about me.
I’d sent them an email, explaining who I am (a local author), what my credentials are and that DESCENT had just been published. They responded within the hour saying they’d love to interview me. I’d procrastinated for days before I sent the email, and now I wish I hadn’t hesitated.
Because of the article, the Invermere Public Library asked me if they could put a copy of DESCENT on their shelves.
So…DESCENT in now available at the Invermere Public Library.
One little email led to two great opportunities, and each day a new milestone moment creates a little happiness in my life.
The questions becomes: what else should I ask for?
Carol Balawyder hosts a series called “How I Got Published.” See my story there, but also scroll through her site. There are many posts and tips about getting published. Thanks Carol.
Kristina Stanley was the director of security at an isolated resort in the debts of the Purcell Mountains, British Columbia. Her time in that job and her love of skiing led her to write the Stone Mountain series.
Her books have garnered the attention of prestigious crime writing organizations in Canada and England. Crime Writers of Canada nominated DESCENT (July 2015, Imajin Books) for the Unhanged Arthur award for the best unpublished crime novel. The Crime Writers’ Association nominated BLAZE for the Debut Dagger (to be published fall 2015, Imajin Books).
How I Got Published
For me the journey to publication was a long one. I wrote four novels. I believe I needed to do this in order to improve my writing and bring it to the level where it deserved to be published.
While I was writing, I spent four years creating an online platform. Most publishers…
Exhausted, that’s how I felt when my Facebook launch party ended. Three hours of chatting online, asking trivia questions, keeping track of winners, and answering questions.
This is the story of how I created and hosted my first launch party.
Preparation for the event.
Create a banner to announce your event. I used Canva.com. It’s free.
Set up event on Facebook. Remember to make the event public or only your friends can see it.
Put the back description of your novel at the top of the page with a link to where your book is sold. You can use booklinker.net to create a link that will take the person to the amazon site of their home country.
Invite all your friends and ask them to share your post.
Send a reminder the day before and the morning of the event.
Have something to give away. I had 14 books donated by other authors. My publisher recommended not to give away DESCENT as it is a new release. I limited each winner to two books.
Create trivia questions. My questions were all related to the books being given away by other authors, but you ask anything really. I created questions from the Amazon site for the books donated so people could look up the answers and there would be no confusion about the correct answer.
Have winners direct message you with their email address. I only gave away eBooks to make the process easy and less costly for donating authors. People could attend your event from different countries and mailing a paperback could get expensive.
If books are being given away, take a screen shot of the book cover from Amazon and post it with the trivia question. Don’t add the link to Amazon as the answer to your question might show up too.
Keep the trivia questions and answers in a word document so you can cut and paste them instead of having to type them as you go. Things move fast in a launch.
Create a list of pre-posts in word in case things get slow. I only used a couple of the ones I created. This could be a question about reading, your books or anything your guests might be interested in.
Here are a couple of sample threads you can post about 10 minutes before the event starts.
Pin the first thread to the top, otherwise people won’t be able to follows what’s going on.
Welcome Guests (other than authors giving away books): Please check in here. Tell us your name, where you’re from and how you know me ☺ This is our main chat thread.
Have a thread where authors can sign in.
Authors check in: Can donating authors please check in here. Tell us your name, location and the name of the title you are donating. Thank you.
After the launch:
send an email to donating authors with email of person who won their book. The donating author will send their book directly to the winner.
Watch the site in the days following the launch. Sometimes people come on later just to comment or ask a question.
Update your Facebook banner to remove the banner announcing the launch and replace with new banner.
Once you add the updated banner, remember to add the shop now button. Again I used the Booklinker.net link so the reader could be taken to their relevant amazon site.
Get ready to be frightened. Today on Mystery Mondays Donna Galanti shares her monsters. In her own words here is what Donna has to say.
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In some movies and books the monsters are obvious. But are the monsters inside us? In the first two books of my paranormal suspense Element Trilogy, A Human Element and A Hidden Element, I write about monstrous characters.
Adrian wields power over his people with fear.
In A Human Element, X-10 appears to be the obvious monster. He is deformed. He kills. He seeks blood and revenge. He has no remorse. Yet as we come to discover it’s a combination of his genes and environment – the line between monster and victim begins to blur.
I am drawn to writing stories that feature the monsters inside us; the things we fear, battle, and seek escape from. Sometimes we need to face them to conquer them. I even faced them in my own real nightmares once and survived, which could be why I write about them.
And sometimes we create the very monsters we fear who are really to be pitied, like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. We can identify with him as we have all felt like an outcast, rejected and unloved at times. Is he truly the monster or is it the human who created him?
X-10 in A Human Element can be seen as a monster in the book. Yet, while his genes and environment have made him what he is, should he be feared or pitied? Or both? You can meet him here.
I believe the true monsters in A Human Element lie beneath the surface of characters that are not so obviously monstrous on the outside.
The abusive foster father.
The scientist who tortures his experiment.
The doctor who sells a baby.
The men who kidnap and torture a sailor.
Do they get what they deserve in the end? You’ll have to read to find out…
I created a new kind of monster in book 2, A Hidden Element, with Adrian. He is menacing and evil and to be feared, but pitied too. In the book we begin with Caleb, the son of Adrian, forced against his will by his father to a new land. We watch, through his eyes, as his father wields his evil power over innocent folk and how Caleb vows to never become like him – a monster.
I am compelled to write about light and dark residing side by side. To me, writing is all about passion – feeling the good and feeling the bad. And I want to feel it all. To explore the twin sides of our human nature: the good inside us, the dark inside us – one book at a time.
Excerpt of X-10 “the monster” from A Human Element:
As X-10 ran under the full moon, leaping over rocks and roots, darting around boulders he could see her in his mind.
Laura. You are mine.
Then he saw her with her man. Water coursed all around them. Her hair hung wet about her shoulders. X-10 closed off his mind’s eye to the scene. It made him feel strange. And in that strange feeling he couldn’t define, X-10 hated her even more.
Rage surged through him and his blood pulsed fast, throbbing under his white skin in blue rivers. Why did she get to have her man when he couldn’t have his woman? Why was she worthy and he wasn’t? But Sabrina’s touches had made him feel worthy. Even if they were paid. And she had smelled and looked so good.
The night flashed through him again and he moaned with agony over the loss of the girl who left a hole in his heart. The girl who called him Charlie and loved him for just one night.
After Sabrina’s fear of him had left her, she’d sat down on his bed then. “Why don’t we just lie here for now? We can talk, you know. Like real…people.”
He stood over her, considering. What would he talk about with a human girl?
She lay down on her side and he did too, facing her. Her blonde hair curved along her breasts like silky strands of sparkly cotton candy. He’d seen a picture of it once being swirled on a stick at a fair. He wondered what it would taste like. What she would taste like.
She touched his face then pulled her fingers away. “When you look at all your parts, you’re not so bad.”
“A monster.”
“No. I’ve been with monsters.”
“Like me?”
She shook her head. “Monsters on the inside.”
Even in the garish light she was the loveliest thing he had ever seen. He wanted to touch her, but was afraid of his urges. To hurt and maim and kill. Good guys don’t do those things. And she had called him by his name. As if he was a good guy.
No! No good guy!
He was evil to the core.
And hate spurred him on now. Hate would help him survive. He forced himself to run faster through the night. Why did Laura get to live a normal life? He vowed to make her end not normal. And in that end, she would wish she had never been born.
A lonesome dog bayed in the hills above X-10 as if approving his plan. Streaks of moonlight and shadows fell across his face like whip lashes over and over, creating a living painting from darkness and light. He would show Laura darkness like she never experienced, and pain. There would be so much pain. He howled back at the creature that rode alone through the woods as he did. Perhaps they would meet along their journeys.
He hoped so. He was getting hungry again.
***
Who are some of your favorite monsters? And did they get what they deserved in the end or were they to be pitied and redeemed?
About Donna:
Donna Galanti is the author of A Human Element and A Hidden Element (Imajin Books), the first two award-winning, bestselling books in the paranormal suspense Element Trilogy, and the middle grade fantasy adventure series Joshua and The Lightning Road (Month9Books). Donna is a contributing editor to International Thriller Writers the Big Thrill magazine and blogs at Project Mayhem. She lives in Pennsylvania with her family in an old farmhouse. Visit her at www.ElementTrilogy.com and www.DonnaGalanti.com.
Hiking along Toby Creek, a dog gets hot. And when a dog is hot, he wants to go swimming. But…
To my humiliation, Kristina only let me go in the baby pool. And you know I like share the moments when I get humiliated, so here I am standing in the shallows checking that none of my dog friends are in the area to make fun of me.
For some reason, Kristina thinks the current is too strong for me. And granted, I don’t like swimming, so I kinda see her point. She trusts me enough to leave me off leash and know the circle of rocks is my boundary.
I’ll leave the dangerous frothing river to the bears and the moose.
DESCENT was published July 25th, 2015, and I’d like to share some of the tools I’ve discovered since the launch.
Novelrank is free software that keeps track of Amazon sales for you. I don’t know how accurate it is, but it does give an idea of how your book is doing.
Booklinker is free service that will create a link for you book, but here’s the magic. Instead of having to create one link for each Amazon site your book is on, it creates one link and when a user clicks on the link, they are taken to that Amazon of their county. Book linker also shows you how many times the link was clicked for each country. Here is the link for DESCENT: myBook.to/Descent
Bitly is another way to create links. In one email campaign I used, I sent a specific link to each person using the amazon of their country. Bitly has a useful stats page that will tell you how many times the link is clicked and what day it was clicked on. Here is an example of the country specific clicks. This doesn’t tell you anything about sales, but it does let you know if people are clicking the link and hence is your campaign working.
The other way to get an idea of how your book is doing is watch amazon rankings and bestseller lists. Your publisher may also publish a bestseller list. Imajin Books showcases their bestselling authors each month and you can see DESCENT did well in both paperback and eBook.
If you know of any other useful tools out there, please comment below and let me know.
Catherine’s books are gritty, yet portray gorgeous surroundings; they deal with sensitive social issues, but always include love and hope. They’re not thrillers, but rather literary mysteries with loads of character and setting. And justice always prevails.
So let’s see what she has to say about female protagonists today. If you have questions for Catherine, leave a comment below and hear back directly from her.
Even before Miss Marple, there was a spirited female, middle-aged and widowed, who partnered up with Scotland Yard to solve crimes (1860’s). Mrs. Paschal was not afraid to eschew the traditional trappings of a lady back then (e.g. crinolines) to chase after the bad guys.
As I began to read mystery novels, and then write my own, I realized very quickly that I love kickass heroines. Whether they are amateur or professional sleuths, I admire their courage, ingenuity and flaunting of social norms.
I started with Nancy Drew, of course, who never obeyed her father, drove a cool car and plunged headlong into danger. I discovered that I like raunchy heroines such as Lisbeth Salander, V.I. Warshawski, Kinsey Milhone, Joanne Kilbourn, Gina Gallo, Kate Garrett, Li Fa-Ling, Bliss Moonbeam Cornwall…oh I could go ON and ON and ON, but I have now covered all the authors who paid me.
As I explored the phenomenon of kickass heroines, I realized that there are a lot of layers to these women. Here is a list of some of my favorite characteristics for our female kickass heroines.
A heroine who has a “distinct self apart from the hero”. Not that some of us don’t want a man or another woman, we just don’t need them.
Our favorite female characters are “universal archetypes and uniquely flawed individuals all at once”.
My favorites display all their traditional feminine qualities, but use these as a source of strength, not weakness (e.g. tenderness, intuition, empathy).
So what female heroine did I create for my four-book mystery series? Emily Taylor, middle-aged principal of a small town elementary school. How does she become kickass? Her love for her husband, her protective qualities, including empathy and nurturing, compel her to act. In every situation, she is drawn to danger only when the people who mean very much to her are threatened. Emily is flawed, but she’s also courageous and smart.
In Sweet Karoline, Anne is a form of anti-heroine. I love her because she’s the opposite of what a reader might expect from a female. She has her reasons for the way she behaves!
Kira Callahan, star of my new novella series, is a retired investigative reporter with a natural affinity for mystery. She may be a senior citizen, but boy can she still kick ass.
Catherine Astolfo is an Arthur Ellis winning author of short stories. Five novels and a novella are published by Imajin Books and have been optioned for film by Sisbro & Co. Inc. A Derrick Murdoch award winner, she is a Past President of Crime Writers of Canada, and a member of both Mesdames of Mayhem and Sisters in Crime. Find all the stories and links right here: www.catherineastolfo.com
Please join me next week to welcome Donna Galanti, author of THE ELEMENT TRILOGY – Paranormal murder and mystery with a dash of steam…
I wish I hadn’t hesitated.
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